Conan Doyle's Trick

As strange as it may seem Arthur Conan Doyle,
the creator of the ultra-rational detective, Sherlock Holmes,
was a believer in Spiritualism. He came to his belief, that
one could communicate with the dead, after his son was killed
in World War I. Conan Doyle became an expert in the field and
even wrote a two volume History of Spiritualism in 1926.

Harry Houdini, perhaps America's foremost
magician in those years, was a friend of Conan Doyle's, but
was skeptical of Spiritualism. Houdini took every opportunity
to use his understanding of magical illusion to expose mediums
and psychics he thought were fakes. He was particularly incensed
by those who took advantage of grieving relatives to make a
profit.

Because of this difference Conan Doyle's and Houdini's
friendship was not always an easy one. For this reason Conan
Doyle, who had come to the states in 1922 to give a series of
lectures on Spiritualism, regarded with suspicion an invitation
by Houdini to attend the annual meeting of the Society of
American Magicians. Conan Doyle was fearful that Houdini,
and the other magicians attending, would take the opportunity
to ridicule his spiritualistic beliefs. Abruptly, though, Conan
Doyle changed his mind, having come up with his own "trick"
for the meeting.

The gathering was held at the Hotel McAlpin. Each
magician demonstrated his best tricks trying to outdo the others.
Finally, at the end of the meeting, Conan Doyle mounted the
stage. A movie projector and screen were brought into the room
without explanation. Many of the people at the meeting knew
of Conan Doyle's beliefs and were aware that he owned a collection
of "psychic photographs" (pictures supposedly showing ghosts,
fairys, etc.) and may have connected them with Conan Doyle's
comments and the motion picture equipment.

Conan Doyle started by telling the audience that
he would answer no questions about the movie they were about
to see, but said, "These pictures are not occult, but they are
psychic because everything that emanates from the human spirit
or human brain is psychic. It is not supernatural; nothing is.
It is preternatural in the sense that it is not known to our
ordinary senses. It is the effect of the joining on the one
hand of imagination, and on the other hand of some power of
materialization. The imagination, I may say, comes from me-the
materializing power from elsewhere."

The lights were then dimmed and the projector
started. Suddenly pictures of apparently living dinosaurs appeared
on the screen. The members of the audience, including the magicians,
were astonished. No one in the room had ever seen anything like
this before. The next day the New York Times ran a story:

DINOSAURS CAVORT IN FILM FOR DOYLE

SPIRITIST MYSTIFIES WORLD-FAMED MAGICIANS
WITH PICTURES OF PREHISTORIC BEASTS--KEEPS ORIGIN A SECRET--MONSTERS
OF OTHER AGES SHOWN, SOME FIGHTING, SOME AT PLAY, IN THEIR NATIVE
JUNGLES

The reporter from the Times didn't know what
to make of it and, as he said in his story, couldn't decide
if Conan Doyle was "making merry" or "lifting the veil" and
using some spiritual means to photograph dinosaurs from the
past. The reporter concluded that these "monsters of the ancient
world, or of the new world, which he [Conan Doyle] has discovered
in the ether, were extraordinarily life-like. If fakes, they
were masterpieces."

Needless
to say Conan Doyle stole the show that evening. Nobody talked
about the magicians performances, only Conan Doyle's film. The
next day, after the story appeared on page one, Conan Doyle
exposed the trick explaining that the dinosaurs were test footage
made by Willis O'Brien for the upcoming feature film,
based on Conan Doyle's novel, The Lost World. O'Brien
had lent the reel to Conan Doyle for the trick and at the same
time gotten a triumphant test of his work, along with free publicity
for the film.